Category: News

A scheme to provide free SIM cards to foreign tourists arriving in India to help them to stay connected while in India has been “discontinued” as it was felt “unnecessary”, informed tourism secretary Rashmi Verma. Under the scheme, foreign tourists availing e-visas were provided free SIM cards on arrival in India. The scheme was launched in February last year by the then tourism minister Mahesh Sharma. The BSNL SIM cards provided to the foreign tourists were with Rs 50 talk time and 50 MB Data. The cards would be activated, once the tourists land in India. It has validity of ... Read more

Trichy, said to be deprived of development projects in recent years, is going to have tourism development projects worth Rs 53 crores as approved by a high power committee of the government. The project is part of the Smart City Mission, which is aiming at make six prominent tourist places neat and tidy. It will be an ABD project (Area Based Development) around Rockfort, consisting of historical places, a park and a water body. It will propagate the rich cultural heritage of Trychy by displaying the authentic historical information of the empires that ruled it. Rockfort, Main Guard Gate, Theppakulam, ... Read more

Representative picture only With an aim to promote religious tourism, IRCTC is all set to launch a special tourist train linking key site in Ramayana. The train, called Sri Ramayana Express, will start operations from November 14. The tour by train will link all the important places that linked to the epic ‘Ramayana”. It will set off from Delhi through Ayodhya, the birth place of Lord Rama as per the epic, to Colombo, Sri Lanka were he fought Ravana to salvage Sita Devi. The train will have 800 seats and the total cost for the tours is expected to be ... Read more

The iconic Burj Khalifa by global developer Emaar Properties in Dubai, which has the world’s tallest LED panel installed on its façade, is now the world’s highest Football Live Scoreboard. With the finals drawing close, visitors and residents can keep up to date with the scorecards of the matches at the world’s most popular football championship that are now relayed on to the LED screen of Burj Khalifa. Featuring the flag of the goal-scoring nation as well, the scoreboard is updated in real-time for football lovers to catch up with the action set against the backdrop of The Dubai Fountain, ... Read more

Total visitor arrivals from India to New Zealand have doubled (from 33,000 to 66,000) in the past four years. Keeping this in mind, Tourism New Zealand is expanding its annual travel trade event, Kiwi Link India this year to three Indian cities. According to the new format, the organisation and partners host key buyers from around India in Mumbai from 9th – 10th July, followed by frontline training in Bangalore and New Delhi on 12th – 13th July respectively. Kiwi Link serves as a platform for Indian travel agents, product managers and planners to interact with New Zealand operators and ... Read more

Railways have agreed to accept soft copies of driving licence and Aadhar as identity proof if they are stored in DigiLocker. DigiLocker is a digital storage device used by people to store official documents on cloud. Indian Railways sent a message to all zonal principal chief commercial managers which conveyed that from now onwards Aadhar card and driving licence stored on DigiLocker will be considered valid identity proof. “While undertaking journey in a train, if a passenger shows the Aadhaar/Driving Licence from the ‘Issued Documents’ section by logging into his/her DigiLocker account, the same should be considered as valid proof ... Read more

Jet Airways said it is offering flat 10 per cent discount on return flights within India. The offer is valid for bookings done from May 19 to September 30. Customers have to book their tickets 15 days prior the date of departure to avail the discount. The discount applicable for the travel period is till September 30, 2018. The offer is applicable only on return journey flights tickets and, on Premiere and Economy class on flights operated by the carrier within India. Customers can avail this promotional offer only on ticket bookings through Jet Airways website or mobile app, said ... Read more

Photo Courtesy: abc.net.au The total phase of the “blood moon” eclipse of July 27 will last 1 hour and 43 minutes, during which Earth’s natural satellite will turn a red or ruddy-brown colour. From start to finish, the entire celestial event will last nearly 4 hours. The eclipse won’t be visible to viewers in North America, except via webcasts. But observers in much of Africa, the Middle East, southern Asia and the Indian Ocean region will get a spectacular show, if the weather is favourable. Unlike with solar eclipses, you need no special equipment to observe lunar eclipses. Lunar eclipses, which occur when ... Read more

Air India’s newly launched New Delhi-Tel Aviv flight services has got an overwhelming response from passengers, and, following this, the national carrier has announced an increase in frequency on this sector, adding a fourth flight a week starting 14th July. Air India will now fly on Saturday in addition to Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday every week on the 256-seater Boeing 787 Dreamliner. “We are pleased with Air India’s move to increase weekly flight frequency in light of the significant rise in tourist arrivals from India. The outbound numbers to Israel have grown exponentially in the last few years and this ... Read more

Thailand Tourism is all set to expand through next year, with at least 10 per cent growth in the revenue from this year, fetching some 3.4 trillion baht. “Strong growth is anticipated from both the international and domestic markets. Next year, the international market should generate income of B2.28 trillion, while the domestic market should contribute B1.12 trillion,” said Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) Governor Yuthasak Supasorn. The TAT also predicted international arrivals would increase from a predicted 37.5 million this year to 40 million next year, with domestic tourists making 169 million trips for 2019, up from 160 million this year. Revenue from ... Read more

Kuwait International Airport has opened a new terminal building (T4) with an aim to increase capacity to 25 million passengers by 2022. Kuwait Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah launched the new terminal earlier this week. T4, which was planned and built within two years, is a 14-gate facility which is designed to handle an extra 4.5 million passengers annually. “Passenger numbers are expected to each 40 million annually by 2037, creating annual income of no less than $800 million and about 40,000 jobs,” Sheikh Salman  Sabah Al-Salem Al-Humoud Al-Sabah, director general of the country’s civil aviation authority. The new ... Read more

As part of celebrating its 18 years of commencing non-stop London – Delhi route on July 5, Virgin Atlantic has announced a new reward programme with additional rewards called FlyingCo for SMEs. The free-to-join rewards programme, businesses will earn FlyingCo miles on all aspects of business travel like flights, home stays, foreign exchange, in addition to FlyingClub miles that individual travellers earn being part of the regular loyalty programme. “We have been working with both bigger and medium and small corporate entities in the Indian market. But what we needed was a better proposition. That is why we introduced the new FlyingCo ... Read more

Travel restrictions imposed to the vehicles going through the Wayanad ghat has lifted temporarily, as informed by Kozhikode District Collector U V Jose. The travel restriction was due to landslides on the road followed by heavy rains. Now the restriction is being relaxed temporarily as the rain has subsided. All vehicles including tourist buses can pass through the ghat; however travel restriction for goods trucks will continue. In order to monitor the current situation, a meeting was held at Thamarassery Thaluk Office, presided by the District Collector. Officials from the Police, Vehicle Department, Public Works Department, Highway Authority etc., participated in ... Read more

Picture Courtesy: Economic Times Train 18, India’s much-awaited locally manufactured semi high-speed train, is expected to be launched in September, 2018. The train is built by Integral Coach Factory (ICF) of Chennai under PM’s Make in India programme. It is capable of running at a speed of 160 km per hour. The luxury train was earlier scheduled for roll-out in July. When asked about the reason for the delay, ICF Chennai General Manager Sudhanshu Mani said, “There is no delay. The train has been built in record time of 16 months while it takes 2 to 3 years to manufacture ... Read more

Nijhawan Group has been appointed as the Advisor on Tourism Promotion of Uzbekistan Tourism in India. The primary objective of this partnership is to increase the number of arrivals to Uzbekistan and to strengthen the image of the destination. “We are excited about the new partnership. We aim to generate wide awareness and publicity on Uzbekistan as a preferred leisure and business destination and boost the country’s tourist arrivals. With this partnership, we are confident to unravel the full potential of India’s growth story. With the Indian outbound at a record high, we are confident of strong numbers coming in ... Read more